Resources

New Zealand vehicle fleet open data sets

The New Zealand vehicle fleet open data provides a point-in-time ‘snapshot’ of all vehicles currently registered in New Zealand. The data relates to currently registered vehicles as recorded on the Motor Vehicle Register (MVR) and is updated monthly, so data is accurate as at the end of the month previous to when it’s accessed. This data is being released in an open format in line with Open and Transparent Government principles.

Publication details

The New Zealand Vehicle Fleet Open Data provides information about currently registered vehicles as recorded on the Motor Vehicle Register (MVR) at the end of each month.

Registration is the process where we add a vehicle’s details to the Motor Vehicle Register and issue its number plates. This should not be confused with vehicle licensing, which is sometimes referred to as ‘rego’.

Note: from April 2017, the MVR Open Data will includes three new additional fields: class, engine_number and chassis7. Details are included in the MVROpenData-Dictionary file.

The data includes:

make

model and sub-model

class

colour

year and month of first registration

vehicle year

import status

country of origin

first 11 characters of the VIN

Territorial Authority (TA)

first 7 characters of the chassis number

engine number

other select characteristics.

For more information about the content of these files, please see the metadata below.

Format and files

This data is provided in comma separated value ‘.csv’ files to meet open data standards.

The data relates to the current vehicle fleet, as at the end of the current month.

To manage the size of the files and make them easier to use, we have split the data into several files – one for each vehicle year from 1990-CurrentYear (inclusive).

All data prior to 1990 is in a single zipped .csv file ‘VehicleYear-Pre1990.zip’

Prior to 2007, vehicle year was the year of manufacture, model year, or year of first registration in New Zealand or internationally.

From January 2007 vehicle year is year of first registration in New Zealand or internationally.

We have also provided a zipped .csv containing all vehicle years. This file is called ‘Fleet-data-all-vehicle-years.zip’. Please be aware that when unzipped this is a very large file and some systems may have difficulty opening it. Please also note that this file exceeds row limitations of programmes such as Microsoft Excel.

Frequency

These figures will be updated monthly. The data is ‘as at’ the end of the previous month.

Data quality

Many fields on the Motor Vehicle Register (MVR) are free text fields and may therefore be subject to spelling mistakes and other human error. While we have algorithmically cleaned the data to correct identified errors, it should be noted that due to the large number of vehicles on the register some information may not have been corrected in this data. Additionally, some variables may be subject to differences in how details are recorded – for example, manufacturers release a variety of sub-models and these may not be referred to, or recorded into the system, uniformly.

As the following variables are infrequently recorded on the MVR there are a large number of missing values in this dataset for these variables. Missing values may be displayed as a blank field or zero (in the case of height and weight). The affected variables are:

height

transmission type

weight.

The New Zealand vehicle fleet – raw open data for specialist use provides a version of the New Zealand vehicle fleet open data that has not been algorithmically cleaned. Other than in very specialist circumstances, we recommend using the cleaned version of the data in which identified errors have been corrected.

Disclaimer

While the Transport Agency has taken reasonable care in compiling the information above and in the .csv files, the information is provided on an ‘as is, where is’ basis and the Transport Agency will not be liable for any action taken on the basis of the information. For further information see the Transport Agency disclaimer and the text of the CC-BY International 4.0 Licence (external link).

Privacy and confidentiality

This data relates to vehicles not people. We have included some information about where the person in whose name the vehicle is registered resides. This is based on the most recent information we have about their physical address. To make sure it isn’t possible to identify a person in the data, we have provided this at Territorial Authority (TA) level. A TA is a broad geographical area defined under the Local Government Act 2002 as a city council or district council. There are 67 TAs consisting of 12 city councils, 53 districts, Auckland Council and Chatham Island Council.

Vehicles belonging to individuals with a confidential listing have not been included.

We have restricted the Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) to the first 11 characters as these are generic and do not identify a unique vehicle.